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Free Community College Success:

Evidence on Barriers and Ideas for the Future

+ Jodie Adams Kirshner

Introduction

This White Paper, researched and written with the support of the ECMC Foundation, develops a more complete portrait of the diverse factors that shape and inhibit [college completion for low-income students] policy outcomes. Drawing from a detailed three-year study of two representative and longer-operating Promise programs in Tennessee and Chicago, the findings unlock new information about how the programs are working, or not, to fulfill the goal of reducing economic inequality in higher education. The data suggest programmatic improvements to the free community college programs and point to further meaningful solutions to address persistent economic disparities in higher education. Tennessee’s Promise program alone shapes the educational paths of more than 17,000 low- income student participants.

The overarching goal is to provide a fuller picture of both the compelling realities of young people and their families as they struggle to navigate serious financial obstacles, and the challenges and opportunities of leveraging investment at the community college level to equalize access to and completion of higher education regardless of economic position, in order, ultimately, to shift the discussion around increasing the number of Americans with four-year (and higher) college degrees.

Read the White Paper

Jodie Adams Kirshner

Jodie Adams Kirshner is a Research Professor at the NYU Marron Institute, where she launched and leads a new economic mobility program. Her work blends in-depth legal and policy analysis with human-centered storytelling to reveal the lived realities behind structural inequality in America.

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